Finished readingAtonement by Ian McEwan. The first third or so of the novel is an extended Virginia Woolf-like passage on an afternoon in an English country house in 1935. I thought the homage was nearly too obvious until (don't read if you don't want to be spoiled) the final reveal that the entire novel is a novel by one of the characters. My mind was set to read critically, but one passage near the end struck me.
...how can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God?... In her imagination she has set the limits and the terms. No atonement for God, or novelists, even if they are atheists. It was always an impossible task, and that was precisely the point. The attempt was all.
My only quibble is that one passage in the beginning of the novel describes the matron of the house having a heightened sense to hear the family and servants about the house as she rested to avoid a migraine. Later in the passage the matron complains that the same house is too quiet and that she can not hear the servants. So which is it?
